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How Many CPU Cores for Gaming?

MalaboogaMalabooga Member UncommonPosts: 2,977
edited January 2017 in Hardware
Well, games have definitely started to use 8 threads (and thats why AMDs FX 83xx chips fare so well in last 2 years).

So 4c/8t Ryzen might be really interesting product, IMO it wont be priced more than i5 and all Ryzen CPUs are unclocked so you can OC them as much as you like.

CPU arena might get pretty interesting soon :) (for all those who are thinking of buying PC, just the same advice as it was 6 month ago: dont buy new stuff month or so before new stuff launches unless your PC died and yuo absolutely need to buy something right this moment lol)



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Comments

  • GdemamiGdemami Member EpicPosts: 12,342
    Bulldozer all over again....

    This time it will be different, I promise!
  • MalaboogaMalabooga Member UncommonPosts: 2,977
    Pentium 4 all over again.
  • filmoretfilmoret Member EpicPosts: 4,906
    Games aren't using 8 threads.  Windows is doing it.
    Are you onto something or just on something?
  • CleffyCleffy Member RarePosts: 6,412
    I need more cores regardless, so I will be moving on to Ryzen. However, the CPU cores developers will target depends on the common gaming machine. Since most gaming machines use quad core Intel's, they will be the target this generation with pc games.
  • laseritlaserit Member LegendaryPosts: 7,591
    Always wait as long as you can before upgrading because there is *alwayssomething new coming out soon.

    "Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee

  • botrytisbotrytis Member RarePosts: 3,363
    filmoret said:
    Games aren't using 8 threads.  Windows is doing it.

    Nope. The game actually HAS to be programmed to be threaded or not. Windows just manages the threads.


  • IselinIselin Member LegendaryPosts: 18,719
    laserit said:
    Always wait as long as you can before upgrading because there is *alwayssomething new coming out soon.
    That's exactly why I'm not buying VR - I'm waiting for the full-body immersion tanks :)
    "Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”

    ― Umberto Eco

    “Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” 
    ― CD PROJEKT RED

  • RidelynnRidelynn Member EpicPosts: 7,383
    Iselin said:
    laserit said:
    Always wait as long as you can before upgrading because there is *alwayssomething new coming out soon.
    That's exactly why I'm not buying VR - I'm waiting for the full-body immersion tanks :)
    I was waiting for this:

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/virtual-reality-smell-porn_us_587d1c16e4b09281d0ebf521

    But appears my wait is over.
  • MMOman101MMOman101 Member UncommonPosts: 1,786
    edited January 2017
    Ridelynn said:
    Iselin said:
    laserit said:
    Always wait as long as you can before upgrading because there is *alwayssomething new coming out soon.
    That's exactly why I'm not buying VR - I'm waiting for the full-body immersion tanks :)
    I was waiting for this:

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/virtual-reality-smell-porn_us_587d1c16e4b09281d0ebf521

    But appears my wait is over.
    WTF,  What has been seen cannot be unseen. 

    “It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”

    --John Ruskin







  • MalaboogaMalabooga Member UncommonPosts: 2,977
    laserit said:
    Always wait as long as you can before upgrading because there is *alwayssomething new coming out soon.
    Not really, after Ryzren releases theres nothing new on the horizon for well over a  year.

    And just ask those who bought old gen GPU month before new gen released how badly they fared lol
    filmoret said:
    Games aren't using 8 threads.  Windows is doing it.
    Yeah, every time you start an application Windows rolls D12 to see how many threads it will use, you nailed it its legit man!
  • laseritlaserit Member LegendaryPosts: 7,591
    Torval said:
    laserit said:
    Always wait as long as you can before upgrading because there is *alwayssomething new coming out soon.
    I kind of go the opposite. Unless I know something new and significant is right around the corner I don't wait at all when I need to upgrade because something *is* always right around the corner. When I need to upgrade I look at my budget and what I can do and get the best thing I can at the time.
    I was being a little sarcastic ;)

    I usually upgrade when I feel the performance improvement will be significant enough to be worth the expense. With flight sims you're always chasing the dragon. With all the candy, you can bring any system to its knees. Better the system the more candy ;)

    Malabooga said:
    laserit said:
    Always wait as long as you can before upgrading because there is *alwayssomething new coming out soon.
    Not really, after Ryzren releases theres nothing new on the horizon for well over a  year.

    And just ask those who bought old gen GPU month before new gen released how badly they fared lol
    I sincerely hope Ryzen is great.

    If it kicks ass I'll surely build one, sooner rather than later :)

    "Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee

  • RidelynnRidelynn Member EpicPosts: 7,383
    Malabooga said:

    filmoret said:
    Games aren't using 8 threads.  Windows is doing it.
    Yeah, every time you start an application Windows rolls D12 to see how many threads it will use, you nailed it its legit man!
    This is actually an interesting statement for a couple of reasons

    First: I am not in front of my Windows machine right now, but I seem to recall doing this recently, and it was actually pretty staggering the number of threads that an application does spawn. On my OS X laptop right now, Chrome is using 45 threads, Mail is using 23 threads, and the kernel has 143 threads open right now. Now, that is OS X, but I seem to recall Windows not being all that dissimilar. That's on a i7-4770HQ CPU, and despite the system having 1,522 threads open across 342 active processes (OS X tells you exactly that information), the system is just chugging along at a 1.08% CPU utilization

    Just because a thread is created doesn't mean it needs a dedicated CPU core, which I think it the point Malabooga and a lot of people are making here. Most threads just sit there, dormant, waiting for whatever data or trigger they need in order to do whatever they are supposed to be doing. Making more threads just for the purpose of making threads doesn't make anything faster, and can actually make a process slower.

    The second part, and this only peripherally touches on the topic: Windows 10 and DX12 have been out for a bit over a year and a half now. I still don't own or play a single DX12 title to my knowledge.
  • filmoretfilmoret Member EpicPosts: 4,906
    edited January 2017
    botrytis said:
    filmoret said:
    Games aren't using 8 threads.  Windows is doing it.

    Nope. The game actually HAS to be programmed to be threaded or not. Windows just manages the threads.
    No windows is doing something and using all the cores.  Ok if you want proof then test this.  Get your favorite cpu demanding game out and make it run on 4 cores and see what happens.  The performance greatly decreases because its only using 4 cores.  Yet somehow the game is only programmed to run on 4 threads so there is no reason for the game performance to decrease.   Unless windows is making it use 8 cores by tasking them.

    And right now there is no game programmed to run on 8 threads.
    Post edited by filmoret on
    Are you onto something or just on something?
  • psiicpsiic Member RarePosts: 1,640
    I was having tons of issues with unstable and crashing games under windows 10, mostly my PC would just hard lock while gaming. 

    I read tons of threads blaming the problems on everything from video drivers to windows 10 updates to old games not compatible with windows 10. None of the fixes worked.

    I read something on Tom's Hardware about disabling some of the cores on AMD processors and even that did not work, but it got me thinking.

    I remembered a fix for core parking under windows 7 and so I went into my bios and disabled core parking and have not had a single issue in 3 months.

    Running an 8320 and it now runs like a dream for every game out there.  
  • RidelynnRidelynn Member EpicPosts: 7,383
    filmoret said:
    botrytis said:
    filmoret said:
    Games aren't using 8 threads.  Windows is doing it.

    Nope. The game actually HAS to be programmed to be threaded or not. Windows just manages the threads.
    No windows is doing something and using all the threads.  Ok if you want proof then test this.  Get your favorite cpu demanding game out and make it run on 4 threads and see what happens.  The performance greatly decreases because its only using 4 threads.  Yet somehow the game is only programmed to run on 4 threads so there is no reason for the game performance to decrease.   Unless windows is making it use 8 threads by tasking them.

    And right now there is no game programmed to run on 8 threads.
    Your right, that no game is particularly programmed to run on 8 threads.

    But your very much confusing Core with Thread.

    I just launched Battle.Net and WoW on my OS X machine.

    Battle.Net by itself spawned 50 threads.
    Just sitting at the login screen, WoW spawned 28 threads.
    Loading into the world, WoW peaked at 290 threads.

    Most of those threads are just sitting around waiting on data.

    What you mean is "disable cores on your CPU and see what happens". The number of threads won't change, but the resources available to handle those threads will.
  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347
    filmoret said:
    botrytis said:
    filmoret said:
    Games aren't using 8 threads.  Windows is doing it.

    Nope. The game actually HAS to be programmed to be threaded or not. Windows just manages the threads.
    No windows is doing something and using all the threads.  Ok if you want proof then test this.  Get your favorite cpu demanding game out and make it run on 4 threads and see what happens.  The performance greatly decreases because its only using 4 threads.  Yet somehow the game is only programmed to run on 4 threads so there is no reason for the game performance to decrease.   Unless windows is making it use 8 threads by tasking them.

    And right now there is no game programmed to run on 8 threads.
    Windows controls which threads have access to which cores at which time.  But a program has to create the threads, and Windows can't do that for you.
  • filmoretfilmoret Member EpicPosts: 4,906
    edited January 2017
    Ridelynn said:
    filmoret said:
    botrytis said:
    filmoret said:
    Games aren't using 8 threads.  Windows is doing it.

    Nope. The game actually HAS to be programmed to be threaded or not. Windows just manages the threads.
    No windows is doing something and using all the threads.  Ok if you want proof then test this.  Get your favorite cpu demanding game out and make it run on 4 threads and see what happens.  The performance greatly decreases because its only using 4 threads.  Yet somehow the game is only programmed to run on 4 threads so there is no reason for the game performance to decrease.   Unless windows is making it use 8 threads by tasking them.

    And right now there is no game programmed to run on 8 threads.
    Your right, that no game is particularly programmed to run on 8 threads.

    But your very much confusing Core with Thread.

    I just launched Battle.Net and WoW on my OS X machine.

    Battle.Net by itself spawned 50 threads.
    Just sitting at the login screen, WoW spawned 28 threads.
    Loading into the world, WoW peaked at 290 threads.

    Most of those threads are just sitting around waiting on data.

    What you mean is "disable cores on your CPU and see what happens". The number of threads won't change, but the resources available to handle those threads will.
    The thread is just a split core.  So when you play a game build for quad core processors it wont run any faster on the i7 then it will on the i5.  It should run slower on the i7 because its running on 4 threads/2 cores.  And that is only half ot he i7's capabilities.  But since windows handles it differently it schedules the 4 thread applications to use all 8 of the cores available by the processor.  Which is why when you disable the 4 cores on the i7 you see a performance decrease.  Because now you are forcing it to use 4 cores which is really all it should ever use.  But because windows is programmed correctly it is actually making 4 threaded applications use 8 cores.  That is why there really is no increase in speed from the i7 to the i5 when it comes to gaming.
    Post edited by filmoret on
    Are you onto something or just on something?
  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347
    Eleven.  Because no one ever gets poor gaming performance from a CPU with exactly eleven cores.
  • RidelynnRidelynn Member EpicPosts: 7,383
    filmoret said:
    Ridelynn said:
    filmoret said:
    botrytis said:
    filmoret said:
    Games aren't using 8 threads.  Windows is doing it.

    Nope. The game actually HAS to be programmed to be threaded or not. Windows just manages the threads.
    No windows is doing something and using all the threads.  Ok if you want proof then test this.  Get your favorite cpu demanding game out and make it run on 4 threads and see what happens.  The performance greatly decreases because its only using 4 threads.  Yet somehow the game is only programmed to run on 4 threads so there is no reason for the game performance to decrease.   Unless windows is making it use 8 threads by tasking them.

    And right now there is no game programmed to run on 8 threads.
    Your right, that no game is particularly programmed to run on 8 threads.

    But your very much confusing Core with Thread.

    I just launched Battle.Net and WoW on my OS X machine.

    Battle.Net by itself spawned 50 threads.
    Just sitting at the login screen, WoW spawned 28 threads.
    Loading into the world, WoW peaked at 290 threads.

    Most of those threads are just sitting around waiting on data.

    What you mean is "disable cores on your CPU and see what happens". The number of threads won't change, but the resources available to handle those threads will.
    The thread is just a split core.  So when you play a game build for quad core processors it wont run any faster on the i7 then it will on the i5.  It should run slower on the i7 because its running on 4 threads/2 cores.  And that is only half ot he i7's capabilities.  But since windows handles it differently it schedules the 4 thread applications to use all 8 of the threads available by the processor.  Which is why when you disable the 4 threads on the i7 you see a performance decrease.  Because now you are forcing it to use 4 threads which is really all it should ever use.  But because windows is programmed correctly it is actually making 4 threaded applications use 8 threads.  That is why there really is no increase in speed from the i7 to the i5 when it comes to gaming.
    All I have to say to this is, condensed into one word:

    No.
  • filmoretfilmoret Member EpicPosts: 4,906
    Ridelynn said:
    filmoret said:
    Ridelynn said:
    filmoret said:
    botrytis said:
    filmoret said:
    Games aren't using 8 threads.  Windows is doing it.

    Nope. The game actually HAS to be programmed to be threaded or not. Windows just manages the threads.
    No windows is doing something and using all the threads.  Ok if you want proof then test this.  Get your favorite cpu demanding game out and make it run on 4 threads and see what happens.  The performance greatly decreases because its only using 4 threads.  Yet somehow the game is only programmed to run on 4 threads so there is no reason for the game performance to decrease.   Unless windows is making it use 8 threads by tasking them.

    And right now there is no game programmed to run on 8 threads.
    Your right, that no game is particularly programmed to run on 8 threads.

    But your very much confusing Core with Thread.

    I just launched Battle.Net and WoW on my OS X machine.

    Battle.Net by itself spawned 50 threads.
    Just sitting at the login screen, WoW spawned 28 threads.
    Loading into the world, WoW peaked at 290 threads.

    Most of those threads are just sitting around waiting on data.

    What you mean is "disable cores on your CPU and see what happens". The number of threads won't change, but the resources available to handle those threads will.
    The thread is just a split core.  So when you play a game build for quad core processors it wont run any faster on the i7 then it will on the i5.  It should run slower on the i7 because its running on 4 threads/2 cores.  And that is only half ot he i7's capabilities.  But since windows handles it differently it schedules the 4 thread applications to use all 8 of the threads available by the processor.  Which is why when you disable the 4 threads on the i7 you see a performance decrease.  Because now you are forcing it to use 4 threads which is really all it should ever use.  But because windows is programmed correctly it is actually making 4 threaded applications use 8 threads.  That is why there really is no increase in speed from the i7 to the i5 when it comes to gaming.
    All I have to say to this is, condensed into one word:

    No.
    Well the i5 is 4 thread processor and the i7 is 8 thread processor.  The newer games are made to run on 4 threads not 8.   So if a game is only capable of using 4 threads then its only going to use 2 cores in the i7 processors because 4 threads=2 cores.  But somehow windows is making it so all 8 threads are being utilized.  If they weren't then games would suck really bad on hyperthreaded cores.
    Are you onto something or just on something?
  • VrikaVrika Member LegendaryPosts: 7,882
    edited January 2017
    @filmoret

    You're using the wrong term, you should use term core instead of thread.

    Term core is used for counting how many threads a processor can run at once, for example an I5 has 4 cores. If the processor has hyperthreading, then you may want to be specific and talk about physical cores and logical cores. For example and I7 could have 4 physical cores and total of 8 logical cores thanks to hyperthreading technology.

    Term thread is used for actual parts of the program that can run on a core. It's used to describe programs. You can use it to describe either actual running program (for expample my chrome is now running on 7 threads), or you can use it to describe how good multi-core support some program has.

    Don't use term thread for describing the capacity of processor. Those are called cores, not threads.

     
  • jusomdudejusomdude Member RarePosts: 2,706
    If games were utilizing 8 cores properly I think current AMD CPUs would be doing much better in benchmarks. If anything is gonna help AMD out it's gonna be the higher IPC. I guess having the extra cores won't hurt anything along with that though. I'm holding back on an upgrade atm. Gonna see if AMD can actually produce a worthwhile CPU this time around. Only have like 1 month to wait.
  • Loke666Loke666 Member EpicPosts: 21,441
    laserit said:
    Always wait as long as you can before upgrading because there is *alwayssomething new coming out soon.
    Not great advice since you becomes stuck with really old hardware eventually. There are always something new and cool in the making after all.

    I generally upgrade my graphics around every 3rd year (a bit depending on when new generations comes out) and my CPU/RAM/Motherboard every 5 years.

    But then I buy rather good stuff, a high end CPU (usually last rather long for us gamers unless we play extremely CPU heavy games, compile programs, convert a lot of video or similar). A cheap low end needs to be changed far more often so as I see it don't I really earn money on cheap stuff, the good stuff is really good for 2 years and then like the cheap crap for another 3.

    And also, I keep my computer clean and usually reinstall Windows at least once during that time. I use fast harddrives (SSDs nowadays, use to have raided IDE/Sata discs and a SCSI configuration earlier). And I get more memory then needed at the time I buy a new computer. All that helps a lot.
  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347
    jusomdude said:
    If games were utilizing 8 cores properly I think current AMD CPUs would be doing much better in benchmarks. If anything is gonna help AMD out it's gonna be the higher IPC. I guess having the extra cores won't hurt anything along with that though. I'm holding back on an upgrade atm. Gonna see if AMD can actually produce a worthwhile CPU this time around. Only have like 1 month to wait.
    It's one thing to use more cores, and quite another to benefit from more cores.  If a game divides its work up among 20 threads, but one of those threads has to do 2/3 of the work, you're not going to see a frame rate benefit to more than two cores.  But if the rest of the threads all get some new batches of work to do simultaneously (e.g., at the start of a new frame), you might see Windows use all of the cores sporadically.
  • GdemamiGdemami Member EpicPosts: 12,342
    edited January 2017
    Torval said:
    To compound the issue the term "threading" has more than one application.
    Yeah, the term is loosely used for describing core count - number of threads that can be processed simultaneously, therefore 2/4 or 4/8 designation(physical/logical cores) for CPUs with HyperThreading technology by Intel.

    An application(ie. games) usually use way more than 4 or 8 threads(blocks of code within a process), that does not mean they need or there is benefit to run them all in parallel.
    Post edited by Gdemami on
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